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‘Like Jim Jones in Guyana’: Ultra MAGA Christian Nationalist Gubernatorial Nominee Has Both Parties Worried – Report

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In the swing state of Pennsylvania, Republican primary voters have nominated a gubernatorial candidate who, shockingly, is even to the right of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas: State Sen. Doug Mastriano, who is going up against the Democratic nominee, Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro, in the general election. Mastriano is a far-right, ultra-MAGA Christian nationalist and conspiracy theorist who continues to promote the Big Lie and falsely claims that the 2020 election was stolen from former President Donald Trump — and a combination of Democrats and establishment Republicans are cringing over the nomination.

Democrats are cringing because Mastriano is so extreme. Republicans are cringing because they fear their party may have blown a chance to have a GOP governor in 2023.

Journalist David Siders takes a close look at Mastriano’s campaign in an article published by Politico on June 10, noting what members of the United States’ two major political parties have been saying about him.

“Mastriano’s victory in the Republican primary for governor last month disgusted Democrats and panicked establishment-minded Republicans,” Siders observes. “To them, he represented a structural threat to democracy, objectionable primarily for promoting Donald Trump’s lie that the 2020 election was rigged. Many of Mastriano’s supporters admire him for that same reason. They too, remain devoted to Trump’s election falsehoods, and they cheered Mastriano’s protests of COVID restrictions in the state.”

Pennsylvania is the ultimate swing state, famously described by Democratic strategist James Carville as Philadelphia in the east, Pittsburgh in the west and Alabama in between. Carville said that back in the 1980s, when he ran the late Bob Casey, Sr.’s gubernatorial campaign. But it still holds true in 2022

Mastriano obviously isn’t going to get much support in Philly Proper, which is overwhelmingly Democratic; Philly’s last GOP mayor, Bernard Samuel, left office in January 1952. It remains to be seen, however, how well Mastriano will perform against Shapiro in Central Pennsylvania, which is much more GOP-friendly.

Siders quotes Neil Oxman, a Pennsylvania-based Democratic adman, as saying of Mastriano, “He’s a nut bag.” And former Rep. Melissa Hart, a Pennsylvania Republican, described Mastriano as someone who “comes across as a cult guy.”

Pennsylvania-based Democratic strategist Daniel Fee told Politico, “(Mastriano) has some rhetoric where you expect people to start holding hands and running towards the cliff. I think he will disqualify himself.”

Interviewed on condition of anonymity, a Politico source described by Siders as a “prominent Republican in Pennsylvania” said of Mastriano, “No one wanted him.”

Another anonymous GOP source described Mastriano as “like Jim Jones in Guyana.”

But the problem with dismissing a far-right Republican extremist as unelectable is that they can surprise you and do much better than expected. In 2016, many pundits wrote off Donald Trump as someone who couldn’t carry Pennsylvania; they were wrong, which is why now-President Joe Biden’s campaign left nothing to chance in the Keystone State in 2020 — and why, unlike Hillary Clinton four years earlier, Biden picked up Pennsylvania’s 20 electoral votes.

Biden, however, only won Pennsylvania by about 2%, while Clinton lost it by less than 1% in 2016. Neither deep red nor deep blue, Pennsylvania is the type of state that can go either way, depending on who shows up on Election Day.

Siders observes, “During the primary, he developed a following by railing against COVID mask and vaccine mandates. He said his opposition to abortion rights includes no exceptions for rape, incest or the life of the mother. He wants to require voters to reregister.”

Joshua Novotney, a GOP lobbyist and former adviser to Sen. Pat Toomey told Politico that ordinarily, he wouldn’t expect someone as far to the right as Mastriano to win in Pennsylvania. But Novotney believes that Mastriano may have a chance if the race becomes a referendum on Biden and inflation.

“I’d say he’s not running against Josh Shapiro,” Novotney said of Mastriano. “He’s running against Joe Biden, and anything’s possible.”

 

 

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‘Good Chance’ Trump Will Be Electorally ‘Humiliated’ in November: Carville

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Democratic strategist and pundit James Carville, responding to the international outcry and condemnation over President Donald Trump’s failed efforts to acquire Greenland, predicted that he will likely lose big in the November midterm elections.

“I think the world wants to return, with the United States as being part of the world,” Carville said on his podcast. “And I think the way that that happens is Trump has to be humiliated.”

“He has to be electorally humiliated, and I think there’s a good, good chance that’s gonna happen this November in our elections,” he said. “It’s not enough that he just walk away, and the Democrats take over the presidency.”

There has to be “a well laid plan and strategy to utterly humiliate him, to the point that everybody around the world says, ‘This m — —, or no one like this m — —, is gonna ever come back and lead the United States,'” Carville declared.

READ MORE: Trump ‘Miscalculated’ and It ‘Backfired’: Columnist Explains What Led to Trump ‘Failing’

“I think that’s the possibility, and I think if that happens, I think we can renormalize the world a lot faster than most.”

“And he’s completely crazy,” Carville also remarked. “He’s going downhill.”

According to the New York Post, Trump will be campaigning during the midterm elections as if he were on the ballot.

“President Trump will treat the November midterm election like a presidential campaign, his senior leadership team tells The Post — traveling like he’s on the ballot, flooding key races with cash and hammering home how his policies will help Americans with affordability,” the Post reported.

Susie Wiles, Trump’s White House Chief of Staff and his former campaign co-chair, told The Post, “He’s going to campaign like it’s 2024.”

READ MORE: Trump Unleashes Wild Ego-Fueled Social Media Grievance Storm After Davos Defeat

Image via Reuters

 

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Trump ‘Miscalculated’ and It ‘Backfired’: Columnist Explains What Led to Trump ‘Failing’

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President Donald Trump “miscalculated” his level of support — especially on the issues that won him re-election in 2024, and it has “backfired,” according to an opinion columnist.

In “Why Trump is failing,” Steven Roberts in the Columbia Missourian writes: “Trump has called 2025 ‘the greatest first year’ of any president, but a majority of Americans strongly disagree.”

“To hardcore MAGA loyalists, the president can do no wrong. But rabid Red Hats account for only about 35% of Americans,” observes Roberts.

He identifies where the president is losing support: “since Trump received almost 50% of the popular vote, that means about 15% of his backers were not true believers, and they are the ones who are slipping away.”

Roberts identifies why.

“The single biggest reason Trump won a second term was economic discontent with the Biden administration, and it’s the single biggest reason so many voters are now disillusioned,” he says, pointing to a CNN poll that, he writes, finds “55% say Trump’s policies have actually made things worse and almost two-thirds say he has not done enough to reduce their cost of living.”

But Roberts offers more.

READ MORE: Trump Unleashes Wild Ego-Fueled Social Media Grievance Storm After Davos Defeat

He explains that Americans supported Trump’s policies on immigration when it was about immigrants at the border.

“They were ‘others’: easy to demonize and dehumanize. They had no voice and no identity, and Trump and his media managers could control what voters knew and felt about them.”

But, he continues, “Trump miscalculated, and his show backfired,” because his targets are no longer “faceless hordes but real people with jobs and families, friends and neighbors.”

The came the shooting of a Minneapolis mother of three, Renee Good.

“The administration tried to brand her as a domestic terrorist who had caused her own demise by driving at the agent. But the videos — seen by more than 80% of Americans — told a different story,” he writes. “Good simply did not look like a terrorist. Plus, independent news organizations analyzed the cellphone footage and concluded that it ‘contradicted’ the official line.”

Trump “lost control of the narrative, and public opinion turned against him.”

The president’s other miscalculation: his stance on the affordability issue, an issue that arguably got him re-elected.

With just 36 percent of Americans saying Trump has the right priorities, Roberts surmises that is simply his “loyal MAGA base.”

And he warns that if this trend continues, voters at the polls in November will “take it out on his party.”

READ MORE: These 19 Democrats May Already Be Jockeying for a Presidential Run: Report

 

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Trump Unleashes Wild Ego-Fueled Social Media Grievance Storm After Davos Defeat

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President Donald Trump on Thursday unleashed dozens of rapid-fire social media posts after what critics described as a difficult few days at Davos. His speech there reportedly further strained relations with U.S. allies, following his Greenland gambit, which produced few if any clear gains and drew criticism over its diplomatic costs. The rollout of Trump’s Board of Peace also struggled to gain traction, with a handful of European allies participating in the inaugural signing ceremony.

In spoke of the more recent posts, Trump went off on “Fake Polls,” while admitting that they have his approval rating “in the low 40s,” although The Economist shows his net approval rating currently at 37%.

“We have the Greatest Economy in the History of our Country, we have the Strongest Border in History, nobody has ever done a job like I have done, and they have me in the low 40s,” he complained. “The Democrats destroyed Healthcare, I’m trying to fix it, and they give me FAKE low numbers. Fake Polls on the Economy, on the Border, on just about everything, are ridiculous and dangerous. The REAL Polls have been GREAT, but they refuse to print them.

“The Times Siena Poll, which is always tremendously negative to me, especially just before the Election of 2024, where I won in a Landslide, will be added to my lawsuit against The Failing New York Times,” he wrote. “Our lawyers have demanded that they keep all Records, and how they ‘computed’ these fake results — Not just the fact that it was heavily skewed toward Democrats. They will be held fully responsible for all of their Radical Left lies and wrongdoing!”

READ MORE: Top Conservative Think Tank Roasted Over ‘Retrograde’ Marriage and Family Report

Some posts promoted questionable claims, including suggesting that annualized U.S. GDP grew to more than 5 percent — while most expectations and Congressional Budget Office predictions are currently about half that number.

He promoted a claim that he “helped create ‘The Martin Luther King Jr International Freedom Games’ in 1966,” when he would have been about 20 years old.

Other posts he promoted talked about the U.S. trade deficit, alleged illegal voting in the 2020 election, immigration, tariffs, globalism, Don Lemon, Supreme Court oral arguments for Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, and one declaring Trump the “greatest President in the world.”

Another post offered the transcript and video of White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller allegedly claiming, and without evidence, that James Comey, Jim Clapper, John Brennan, Lisa Monaco, and President Barack Obama “all conspired and worked together to sabotage, undermine, unravel, and overthrow the United States government and the democratic institutions and structures of this country.”

That post, as Raw Story reported, appeared to be in response to former Special Counsel Jack Smith’s currently ongoing congressional public testimony.

Another post included video of Argentinian President Javier Milei attacking “wokeism” while praising the “Americas.”

READ MORE: These 19 Democrats May Already Be Jockeying for a Presidential Run: Report

 

Image via Reuters 

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